CHAPTER VIII.
THE ESCAPE
It was midnight in the chapel of the convent.
The moonlight shone with exceeding lustre through the tall casements, and
lit into a ghastly semblance of life the marble images of saint and
martyr, that threw their long shadows over the consecrated floor.
Nothing could well be conceived more dreary, solemn, and sepulchral than
that holy place: its distained and time-hallowed walls; the impenetrable
mass of darkness that gathered into those recesses which the moonlight
failed to reach; its antique and massive tombs, above which reclined the
sculptured effigies of some departed patroness or abbess, who had
exchanged a living grave for the Mansions of the Blest. But there--oh,
wonderful human heart!--even there, in that spot, the very homily and
warning against earthly affections and mortal hopes--even there, couldst
thou beat with as wild, as bright, and as pure a passion as ever heaved
the breast and shone in the eyes of Beauty, in the free air that ripples
the Guadiana, or amidst the twilight dance of Castilian maids.
A tall figure, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak, passed slowly up the
aisle. But light and cautious though the footstep, it woke a low,
hollow, ominous echo, that seemed more than the step itself to disturb
the sanctity of the place. It paused opposite to a confessional, which
was but dimly visible through the shadows around it. And then there
emerged timidly a female form; and a soft voice whispered "It is thou,
Fonseca!"
"Hist!" was the answer; "he waits without. Be quick; speak not--come."
Beatriz recoiled in surprise and alarm at the voice of a stranger; but
the man, seizing her by the hand, drew her hastily from the chapel, and
hurried her across the garden, through a small postern door, which stood
ajar, into an obscure street bordering the convent wall. Here stood the
expectant porter, with a bundle in his hand, which he opened, and took
thence a long cloak, such as the women of middling rank in Madrid wore in
the winter season, with the customary mantilla or veil. With these,
still without speaking, the stranger hastily shrouded the form of the
novice, and once more hurried her on till about a hundred yards from the
garden gate be came to a carriage, into which he lifted Beatriz,
whispered a few words to the porter, seated himself by the side of the
novice, and the vehicle drove rapidly away.
It was some moments before Beatriz could sufficiently recover from her
first agitation and terror, to feel alive to all the strangeness of her
situation. She was alone with a stranger; where was Fonseca? She turned
towards her companion.
"Who art thou?" she said, "whither art thou leading me-and why--"
"Why is not Don Martin by thy side? Pardon me, senora: I have a billet
for thee from Fonseca; in a few minutes thou wilt know all."
At this time the vehicle came suddenly in the midst of a train of footmen
and equipages that choked up the way. There was a brilliant
entertainment at the French embassy; and thither flocked, all the rank
and chivalry of Madrid. Calderon drew down the blind and hastily
enjoined silence on Beatriz. It was some minutes before the driver
extricated himself from the throng; and then, as if to make amends for
the delay, he put his horses to their full speed, and carefully selected
the most obscure and solitary thoroughfares. At length, the carriage
entered the range of suburbs which still at this day the traveller passes
on his road from Madrid to France. The horses stopped before a lonely
house that stood a little apart from the road, and which from the fashion
of its architecture appeared of considerable antiquity. The stranger
descended and knocked twice at the door: it was opened by an old man,
whose exaggerated features, bended frame, and long beard, proclaimed him
of the race of Israel. After a short and whispered parley, the stranger
returned to Beatriz, gravely assisted her from the carriage, and, leading
her across the threshold, and up a flight of rude stairs, dimly lighted,
entered a chamber richly furnished. The walls were hung with stuffs of
gorgeous colouring and elaborate design. Pedestals of the whitest marble
placed at each corner of the room supported candelabra of silver. The
sofas and couches were of the heavy but sumptuous fashion which then
prevailed in the palaces of France and Spain; and of which Venice (the
true model of the barbaric decorations with which Louis the Fourteenth
corrupted the taste of Paris) was probably the original inventor. In an
alcove, beneath a silken canopy, was prepared a table, laden with wines,
fruits, and viands; and altogether the elegance and luxury that
characterised the apartment were in strong and strange contrast with the
half-ruined exterior of the abode, the gloomy and rude approach to the
chamber, and the mean and servile aspect of the Jew, who stood, or rather
cowered by the door, as if waiting for further orders. With a wave of
the hand the stranger dismissed the Israelite; and then, approaching
Beatriz, presented to her Fonseca's letter.
As with an enchanting mixture of modesty and eagerness Beatriz, half
averting her face, bent over the well-known characters, Calderon gazed
upon her with a scrutinising and curious eye.
The courtier was not, in this instance, altogether the villain that from
outward appearances the reader may have deemed him. His plan was this:
he had resolved on compliance with the wishes of the prince--his safety
rested on that compliance. But Fonseca was not to be sacrificed without
reserve. Profoundly despising womankind, and firmly persuaded of their
constitutional treachery and deceit, Calderon could not believe the
actress that angel of light and purity which she seemed to the enamoured
Fonseca. He had resolved to subject her to the ordeal of the prince's
addresses. If she fell, should he not save his friend from being the
dupe of an artful _intriguante_?--should he not deserve the thanks of Don
Martin for the very temptation to which Beatriz was now to be submitted?
If he could convince Fonseca of her falsehood, he should stand acquitted
to his friend, while he should have secured his interest with the prince.
But if, on the other hand, Beatriz came spotless through the trial; if
the prince, stung by her obstinate virtue, should menace to sink
courtship into violence, Calderon knew that it would not be in the first
or second interview that the novice would have any real danger to
apprehend; and he should have leisure to concert her escape by such means
as would completely conceal from the prince his own connivance at her
flight. Such was the compromise that Calderon had effected between his
conscience and his ambition. But while he gazed upon the novice, though
her features were turned from him, and half veiled by the headdress she
had assumed, strange feelings, ominous and startling, like those
remembrances of the Past which sometimes come in the guise of prophecies
of the Future, thronged, indistinct and dim, upon his breast. The
unconscious and exquisite grace of her form, its touching youth, an air
of innocence diffused around it, a something helpless, and pleading to
man's protection, in the very slightness of her beautiful but fairy-like
proportions, seemed to reproach his treachery, and to awaken whatever of
pity or human softness remained in his heart.
The novice had read the letter; and turning, in the impulse of surprise
and alarm, to Calderon for explanation, for the first time she remarked
his features and his aspect; for he had then laid aside his cloak, and
the broad Spanish hat with its heavy plume. It was thus that their eyes
met, and, as they did so, Beatriz, starting from her seat, uttered a wild
cry--
"And thy name is Calderon--Don Roderigo Calderon?--is it possible? Hadst
thou never another name?" she exclaimed; and, as she spoke, she
approached him slowly and fearfully.
"Lady, Calderon is my name," replied the marquis: but his voice faltered.
"But thine--thine--is it, in truth, Beatriz Coello?"
Beatriz made no reply, but continued to advance, till her very breath
came upon his cheek; she then laid her hand upon his arm, and looked up
into his face with a gaze so earnest, so intent, so prolonged, that
Calderon, but for a strange and terrible thought--half of wonder, half of
suspicion, which had gradually crept into his soul, and now usurped it--
might have doubted whether the reason of the poor novice was not
unsettled.
Slowly Beatriz withdrew her eyes, and they fell upon a large mirror
opposite, which reflected in full light the features of Calderon and
herself. It was then--her natural bloom having faded into a paleness
scarcely less statue-like than that which characterised the cheek of
Calderon himself, and all the sweet play and mobility of feature that
belong to first youth being replaced by a rigid and marble stillness of
expression--it was then that a remarkable resemblance between these two
persons became visible and startling. That resemblance struck alike, and
in the same instant, both Beatriz and Calderon; and both, gazing on the
mirror, uttered an involuntary and simultaneous exclamation.
With a trembling and hasty hand the novice searched amidst the folds of
her robe, and drew forth a small leathern case, closed with clasps of
silver. She touched the spring, and took out a miniature, upon which she
cast a rapid and wild glance; then, lifting her eyes to Calderon, she
cried, "It must be so--it is, it is my father!" and fell motionless at
his feet.
Calderon did not for some moments heed the condition of the novice: that
chamber, the meditated victim, the present time, the coming evil--all
were swept away from his soul; he was transported back into the past,
with the two dread Spirits, Memory and Conscience! His knees knocked
together, his aspect was livid, the cold drops stood upon his brow; he
muttered incoherently and then bent down, and took up the picture. It
was the face of a man in the plain garb of a Salamanca student, and in
the first flush of youth; the noble brow, serene and calm, and stamped
alike with candour and courage; the smooth cheek, rich with the hues of
health; the lips, parting in a happy smile, and eloquent of joy and hope;
it was the face of that wily, grasping, ambitious, unscrupulous man, when
life had yet brought no sin; it was, as if the ghost of youth were come
back to accuse the crimes of manhood! The miniature fell from his hand--
he groaned aloud. Then gazing on the prostrate form of the novice, he
said--"Poor wretch! can I believe that thou art indeed of mine own race
and blood; or rather, does not nature, that stamped these lineaments on
thy countenance, deceive and mock me? If she, thy mother, lied, why not
nature herself?"
He raised the novice in his arms, and gazed long and wistfully upon her
lifeless, but almost lovely features. She moved not--she scarcely seemed
to breathe; yet he fancied he felt her embrace tightening round him--he
fancied he heard again the voice that had hailed him "FATHER!" His heart
beat aloud, the divine instinct overpowered all things, he pressed a
passionate kiss upon her forehead, and his tears fell fast and warm upon
her cheek. But again the dark remembrance crossed him, and he shuddered,
placed the novice hastily on one of the couches, and shouted aloud.
The Jew appeared and was ordered to summon Jacinta. A young woman of the
same persuasion, and of harsh and forbidding exterior, entered, and to
her care Calderon briefly consigned the yet insensible Beatriz.
While Jacinta unlaced the dress, and chafed the temples, of the novice,
Calderon seemed buried in gloomy thought. At last he strode slowly away,
as if to quit the chamber, when his foot struck against the case of the
picture, and his eye rested upon a paper which lay therein, folded and
embedded. He took it up, and, lifting aside the hangings, hurried into a
small cabinet lighted by a single lamp. Here, alone and unseen, Calderon
read the following letter:
"TO RODERIGO NUNEZ.
"Will this letter ever meet thine eyes? I know not; but it is comfort to
write to thee on the bed of death; and were it not for that horrible and
haunting thought that thou believest me--me whose very life was in thy
love--faithless and dishonoured, even death itself would be the sweeter
because it comes from the loss of thee. Yes, something tells me that
these lines will not be written in vain; that thou wilt read them yet,
when this hand is still and this brain at rest, and that then thou wilt
feel that I could not have dared to write to thee if I were not innocent;
that in every word thou wilt recognise the evidence that is strong as the
voice of thousands,--the simple but solemn evidence of faith and truth.
What! when for thee I deserted all--home, and a father's love, wealth,
and the name I had inherited from Moors who had been monarchs in their
day--couldst thou think that I had not made the love of thee the core,
and life, and principle of my very being! And one short year, could that
suffice to shake my faith?--one year of marriage, but two months of
absence? You left me, left that dear home, by the silver Xenil. For
love did not suffice to you; ambition began to stir within you, and you
called it 'love.' You said, 'It grieved you that I was poor; that you
could not restore to me the luxury and wealth I had lost.' (Alas! why
did you turn so incredulously from my assurance, that in you, and you
alone, were centred my ambition and pride?) You declared that the vain
readers of the stars had foretold at your cradle that you were
predestined to lofty honours and dazzling power, and that the prophecy
would work out its own fulfilment. You left me to seek in Madrid your
relation who had risen into the favour of a minister, and from whose love
you expected to gain an opening to your career. Do you remember how we
parted? how you kissed away my tears, and how they gushed forth again?
how again and again you said, 'Farewell!' and again and again returned as
if we could never part? And I took my babe, but a few weeks born, from
her cradle, and placed her in thy arms, and bade thee see that she had
already learned thy smile; and were these the signs of falsehood? Oh,
how I pined for the sound of thy footstep when thou wert gone! how all
the summer had vanished from the landscape; and how, turning to thy
child, I fancied I again beheld thee! The day after thou hadst left me
there was a knock at the cottage; the nurse opened it, and there entered
your former rival, whom my father had sought to force upon me, the
richest of the descendants of the Moor, Arraez Ferrares. Why linger on
this hateful subject? He had tracked us to our home, he had learned thy
absence, he came to insult me with his vows. By the Blessed Mother, whom
thou hast taught me to adore, by the terror and pang of death, by my
hopes of Heaven, I am innocent, Roderigo, I am innocent! Oh, how couldst
thou be so deceived? He quitted the cottage, discomfited and enraged;
again he sought me, and again and again; and when the door was closed
upon him, he waylaid my steps. Lone and defenceless as we were, thy wife
and child, with but one attendant I feared him not; but I trembled at thy
return, for I knew that thou went a Spaniard, a Castilian, and that
beneath thy calm and gentle seeming lurked pride, and jealousy, and
revenge. Thy letter came, the only letter since thy absence, the last
letter from thee I may ever weep over, and lay upon my heart. Thy
relation was dead, and his wealth enriched a nearer heir. Thou wert to
return. The day in which I might expect thee approached--it arrived.
During the last week I had seen and heard no more of Ferrares. I trusted
that he had at length discovered the vanity of his pursuit. I walked
into the valley, thy child in my arms, to meet thee; but thou didst not
come. The sun set, and the light of thine eyes replaced not the
declining day. I returned home, and watched for thee all night, but in
vain. The next morning again I went forth into the valley, and again,
with a sick heart, returned to my desolate home. It was then noon. As I
approached the door I perceived Ferrares. He forced his entrance. I
told him of thy expected return, and threatened him with thy resentment.
He left me; and, terrified with a thousand vague forebodings, I sat down
to weep. The nurse, Leonarda, was watching by the cradle of our child in
the inner room.
"I was alone. Suddenly the door opened. I heard thy step; I knew it; I
knew its music. I started up. Saints of Heaven! what a meeting--what a
return! Pale, haggard, thine hands and garments dripping blood, thine
eyes blazing with insane fire, a terrible smile of mockery on thy lip,
thou stoodst before me. I would have thrown myself on thy breast; thou
didst cast me from thee; I fell on my knees, and thy blade was pointed at
my heart--the heart so full of thee! 'He is dead,' didst thou say, in a
hollow voice; 'he is dead--thy paramour--take thy bed beside him!' I
know not what I said, but it seemed to move thee; thy hand trembled, and
the point of thy weapon dropped. It was then that, hearing thy voice,
Leonarda hastened into the room, and bore in her arms thy child. 'See,'
I exclaimed, 'see thy daughter; see, she stretches her hands to thee--she
pleads for her mother!' At that sight thy brow became dark, the demon
seized upon thee again. 'Mine!' were thy cruel words--they ring in my
ear still--'no! she was born before the time--ha! ha!--thou didst betray
me from the first!' With that thou didst raise thy sword; but, even then
(ah, blessed thought! even then) remorse and love palsied thy hand, and
averted thy gaze: the blow was not that of death. I fell senseless to
the ground, and when I recovered thou wert gone. Delirium succeeded; and
when once more my senses and reason returned to me, I found by my side a
holy priest, and from him, gradually, I learned all that till then was
dare. Ferrares had been found in the valley, weltering in his blood.
Borne to a neighbouring monastery, be lingered a few days, to confess the
treachery he had practised on thee; to adopt, in his last hours, the
Christian faith; and to attest his crime with his own signature. He
enjoined the monk, who had converted and confessed him, to place this
proof of my innocence in my hands. Behold it enclosed within. If this
letter ever reach thee, thou wilt learn how thy wife was true to thee in
life, and has therefore the right to bless thee in death."
At this passage, Calderon dropped the letter, and was seized with a kind
of paralysis, which for some moments seemed to deprive him of life
itself. When he recovered he eagerly grasped a scroll that was enclosed
in the letter, but which, hitherto, he had disregarded. Even then, so
strong were his emotions, that sight itself was obscured and dimmed, and
it was long before he could read the characters, which were already
discoloured by time.
"TO INEZ.
"I have but a few hours to live,--let me spend them in atonement and in
prayer, less for myself than thee. Thou knowest not how madly I adored
thee; and how thy hatred or indifference stung every passion into
torture. Let this pass. When I saw thee again--the forsaker of thy
faith--poor, obscure, and doomed to a peasant's lot--daring hopes shaped
themselves into fierce resolves. Finding that thou wert inexorable, I
turned my arts upon thy husband. I knew his poverty and his ambition: we
Moors have had ample knowledge of the avarice of the Christians'. I bade
one whom I could trust to seek him out at Madrid. Wealth--lavish wealth
--wealth that could open to a Spaniard all the gates of power was offered
to him if he would renounce thee forever. Nay, in order to crush out all
love from his breast, it was told him that mine was the prior right--that
thou hadst yielded to my suit ere thou didst fly with him--that thou
didst use his love as an escape from thine own dishonour--that thy very
child owned another father. I had learned, and I availed myself of the
knowledge, that it was born before its time. We had miscalculated the
effect of this representation, backed and supported by forged letters:
instead of abandoning thee, he thought only of revenge for his shame.
As I left thy house, the last time I gazed upon thine indignant eyes, I
found the avenger, on my path! He had seen me quit thy roof--he needed
no other confirmation of the tale. I fell into the pit which I had
digged for thee. Conscience unnerved my hand and blunted my sword: our
blades scarcely crossed before his weapon stretched me on the ground.
They tell me he has fled from the anger of the law; let him return
without a fear Solemnly, and from the bed of death, and in the sight of
the last tribunal, I proclaim to justice and the world that we fought
fairly, and I perish justly. I have adopted thy faith, though I cannot
comprehend its mysteries. It is enough that it holds out to me the only
hope that we shall meet again. I direct these lines to be transmitted to
thee--an eternal proof of thy innocence and my guilt. Ah, canst thou
forgive me? I knew no sin till I knew thee.
"ARRAEZ FERRARES."
Calderon paused ere he turned to the concluding lines of his wife's
letter; and, though he remained motionless and speechless, never were
agony and despair stamped more terribly on the face of man.
CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER OF INEZ.
"And what avails to me this testimony of my faith? thou art fled; they
cannot track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am
dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought
darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is
sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy
love! Can the shadow live without the sun? And wilt thou never place
thy hands on my daughter's head, and bless her for her mother's sake?
Ah, yes--yes! The saints that watch over our human destinies will one
day cast her in thy way: and the same hour that gives thee a daughter
shall redeem and hallow the memory of a wife. . . . Leonarda has
vowed to be a mother to our child; to tend her, work for her, rear her,
though in poverty, to virtue. I consign these letters to Leonarda's
charge, with thy picture--never to be removed from my breast till the
heart within has ceased to beat. Not till Beatriz (I have so baptised
her--it was thy mother's name!) has attained to the age when reason can
wrestle with the knowledge of sorrow, shall her years be shadowed with
the knowledge of our fate. Leonarda has persuaded me that Beatriz shall
not take thy name of Nunez. Our tale has excited horror--for it is not
understood--and thou art called the murderer of thy wife; and the story
of our misfortunes would cling to our daughter's life, and reach her
ears, and perhaps mar her fate. But I know that thou wilt discover her
not the less, for Nature has a Providence of its own. When at last you
meet her, protect, guard, love her--sacred to you as she is, and shall
be--the pure but mournful legacy of love and death. I have done:
I die blessing thee!"
"INEZ."
Scarce had he finished those last words, ere the clock struck: it was the
hour in which the prince was to arrive. The thought restored Calderon to
the sense of the present time--the approaching peril. All the cold
calculations he had formed for the stranger-novice vanished now. He
kissed the letter passionately, placed it in his breast, and hurried into
the chamber where he had left his child. Our tale returns to Fonseca.
